WB polls: Buddha has himself to blame for Left-front's loss

When the Left Front registered a landslide victory in the West Bengal assembly elections in May 2006, everyone started comparing Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee with Deng Xiaoping.

But after five years, the victor is now the villain of the piece, the man held responsible behind the end of the Front's 34-year reign.

Unlike his predecessor Jyoti Basu, Bhattacharjee could not emerge as the patriarch of the Left Front, mainly because of his soft image and his failure to reign in "corrupt and oppressive" leaders in the grassroots level.

Moreover, after death of Anil Biswas, the state CPM chief and a deft strategist, in 2006, a large section of the party cadre deviated from the party's principles, weakening the party's base.

Biman Bose, the current state secretary of the party, did not have the charisma or the will to stem the rot.

On top of that, Bhattacharjee and his senior party leaders proved too amateur in electoral arithmetic and could not assess the situation this year, despite the consecutive defeats in Panchayat elections in 2008, Lok Sabha polls in 2009 and civic elections in 2010.

While Communism suffered a natural death across the globe, the dynamics behind Left Front's spectacular electoral success in 2006 - the Left Front had won 235 of the 293 seats that went to the polls - remained a mystery for everyone.

Everyone attributed the triumph as a support to the industrialisation efforts of the chief minister, ironical in today's context.

The media, too, went gaga over Bhattacharjee's reformist agenda, which was a blend of socialist ideology and a liberal economic system.

But, in less than one year of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's electoral avalanche, the political theatre started to turn topsy-turvy for the Left over a proposed mega-chemical hub at Nandigram in East Midnapore district.

The Muslim-majority farmers refused to part with their land, and a Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (committee against land acquirement) was soon born, sowing the first seeds of anti-Left discontent.

In hindsight, the thumping electoral triumph in 2006 had actually got into Bhattacharjee's head as he made a mockery of the Opposition inside the assembly.

"We've 235 and they 30," he said in a voice laced with scorn.

Though a thorough-bred Communist, Bhattacharjee, after the victory in 2006, seemingly lost his touch with the grassroots in the state and drifted away from the party's proletarian ideology.

Along with industries minister Nirupam Sen, he tried to forcefully push the agenda that industry is the only future of West Bengal.

Without assessing the pulse of the poor farmers, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's use of brute force in acquiring farmland from poor farmers in Nandigram was the beginning of the end of the fall for the Left Front government.

He erred further by deputing tainted CPM strongman Lakshman Seth, then a Lok Sabha member from Tamluk, to guide the state government to acquire land for the Nandigram chemical hub. Seth's aggression and use of muscle power antagonised locals, hitherto supporters of the red-brigade.

While industrialisation was top on the government's agenda, it was not able to explain as to why fertile land, and not fallow plots, in a poor district like Purulia were chosen to set up factories.

Even after burning his finger in the Nandigram fiasco, it was astonishing that Bhattacharjee did not take cautious steps while acquiring land for the Tata Motors' Nano project in Singur. No wonder, he is to be blamed for scripting his own Waterloo.